Hearing for death row inmate Troy Davis

[2-0-Sixx]

The US Supreme Court has ordered that a death row inmate should receive a new hearing to see if evidence not heard at his trail proves his innocence.

Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 of killing a policeman in the southern state of Georgia, but key witnesses have recanted their testimony.

In September the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution hours before he was due to die from lethal injection.

His supporters include Pope Benedict XVI and US ex-President Jimmy Carter.

Lawyers for Davis said in their appeal that seven of nine prosecution witnesses had retracted their trial testimony.

The lawyers also said several new witnesses had identified or implicated a different individual as the person who killed police officer Mark MacPhail in car park in 1989.

Attorneys for the state of Georgia had argued that the appeal should be rejected.

They said each court that had reviewed claims by Davis had said he had failed to prove his innocence.

Conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from the Supreme Court decision.

Justice Scalia said the Supreme Court was sending the federal judge in Georgia on a "fool's errand"

But Justice John Paul Stevens, supported by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, said Justice Scalia was wrong.

"The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing," wrote Justice Stevens.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8206032.stm

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

In the past two decades, federal and state courts have overturned 68 percent of the death sentences they have reviewed because of serious errors in their trials, according to a new study. And in cases sent back for retrials, 82 percent of convicted capital defendants received new sentences that were other than death -- including 7 percent who were found innocent.

"This study is designed to look at the system and how common mistakes are," says its author, law professor James S. Liebman, of Columbia University. "What we've found is it's not one state, it's not one case, but it's the system in which this kind of serious error is epidemic."

The study defines "serious error" as error that "substantially undermines the reliability of the guilt finding or death sentence imposed at trial" and that led a court to overturn the conviction, the sentence or both.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/68percent.htm

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

 

[JoMoDo]

Death penalty is stupid.

 

[Merciedez]

in a moment of fear, one would have to wonder if fear is a accumulation of many factors. are they valid?

how many times, have trials mislead that a person life is great than another because a uniform is involved. in reality at any given moment our fears take over reasoning. The majority are not given lessons on what to do in a situations nor are we given a practice run of a situation that would cause a person to kill a person...what one should do or think.

the thinking process of a human being is in its right a constant process of environment, specific situations, even past suggestions of emotions. The moment of survival instinct one will do what they dim for them a decision worth acting on, good or bad.

our judicial systems forgo the psychological bases of the human emotion especially, fear. it is such a basic instinct that our bodies react :"it's me against you". The law plays in the belief that they know a person, how they should be, and how they should act...in fact the cause of most decision eliminates that as human being we never have a chance to think through, when one is forced in a state of fear.